Not your traditional jolly holly Christmas fare in this movie as you might expect from the title, it started off like it was going to be Abigail's Christmas party but ended up in a much darker, post-apocalyptic place altogether.
Matthew Goode and Keira Knightley are the couple living in a big country house with their three young foul-mouthed sons, into whose abode descends a motley crew of family and friends to on the face of it celebrate Christmas with them. After some initial thumbnail character sketches of all the participants coupled with some awkward attempts at humour and family tensions it seems as if we're in potential "Love Actually" territory but things aren't as they appear. Pretty soon, we discern that they are actually all gathering to carry out a mass suicide to prevent them dying a horrible agonising death from the gaseous fall-out blowing into every corner of the country, leaving no survivors as it goes.
The government's considered response apparently is to issue everyone with a suicide pill to enable them to die in their own ordered way and not succumb to an otherwise painful, disfiguring death from the contagion. Before the end, the film has hit full "And then there were none..." mode although a slightly telegraphed, mildly shocking final scene sheds a new light on proceedings.
I'm all for moving away from and indeed satirising "Hallmark"-type cosy, unctuous seasonal features but this did seem a little too drastic in its intent. The different relationships and tensions between the partygoers are too lightly depicted, while the attempts at humour rarely hit the mark. Quite why the young children have to appear so obnoxious and speak so profanely I'm not sure, unless it was a thinly-veiled attack on the middle and upper classes where apparently it's cool for a parent to sit in alongside two of his teenage sons in a bath.
In these continuing days of Covid and its devastating sweep across the planet and it seems Britain in particular, the film has something to say about how society faces a worldwide pandemic and similarly poses relevant questions about the right to die and assisted suicide. In the end though, as the swell of the moody synthesiser and orchestra grows ever louder, I found it difficult to relate to and sympathise with the plights of this extended, unappealing family. Overall for me the film lacked subtlety and failed to strike an appreciable balance between satirical humour and science-fiction horror.
Still, it made for an alternative to the usual "Deck The Halls" / "Christmas Vacation" nonsense that normally gets served up at this time of year and is worth a watch for that reason alone.
Matthew Goode and Keira Knightley are the couple living in a big country house with their three young foul-mouthed sons, into whose abode descends a motley crew of family and friends to on the face of it celebrate Christmas with them. After some initial thumbnail character sketches of all the participants coupled with some awkward attempts at humour and family tensions it seems as if we're in potential "Love Actually" territory but things aren't as they appear. Pretty soon, we discern that they are actually all gathering to carry out a mass suicide to prevent them dying a horrible agonising death from the gaseous fall-out blowing into every corner of the country, leaving no survivors as it goes.
The government's considered response apparently is to issue everyone with a suicide pill to enable them to die in their own ordered way and not succumb to an otherwise painful, disfiguring death from the contagion. Before the end, the film has hit full "And then there were none..." mode although a slightly telegraphed, mildly shocking final scene sheds a new light on proceedings.
I'm all for moving away from and indeed satirising "Hallmark"-type cosy, unctuous seasonal features but this did seem a little too drastic in its intent. The different relationships and tensions between the partygoers are too lightly depicted, while the attempts at humour rarely hit the mark. Quite why the young children have to appear so obnoxious and speak so profanely I'm not sure, unless it was a thinly-veiled attack on the middle and upper classes where apparently it's cool for a parent to sit in alongside two of his teenage sons in a bath.
In these continuing days of Covid and its devastating sweep across the planet and it seems Britain in particular, the film has something to say about how society faces a worldwide pandemic and similarly poses relevant questions about the right to die and assisted suicide. In the end though, as the swell of the moody synthesiser and orchestra grows ever louder, I found it difficult to relate to and sympathise with the plights of this extended, unappealing family. Overall for me the film lacked subtlety and failed to strike an appreciable balance between satirical humour and science-fiction horror.
Still, it made for an alternative to the usual "Deck The Halls" / "Christmas Vacation" nonsense that normally gets served up at this time of year and is worth a watch for that reason alone.